


Dance Inside

by tryslora



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ballet, Canonical Character Death, Dancer Derek, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, M/M, New York City, Original Character(s), Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3161498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dance has music. It has music similar to what Paige played, and maybe, just maybe, it can lift the darkness from around his heart and give him back the soul that her death took away.</p><p>or</p><p>The one where Derek dances in NYC and when life in Beacon Hills calms down, maybe he can dance then, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance Inside

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [this prompt](http://tryslora.tumblr.com/post/107593973417/jerakeenc-i-know-there-are-dancer-derek-aus-out) from jerakeenc on tumblr. When I read it, I couldn't get the idea out of my head for a story bookended by pre-canon and post-canon and Derek dancing. I had to write this, and it's not exactly the prompt, but it's what came out. As always, I do not own the world nor characters of Teen Wolf, I just like to play with the characters.

The stairs that lead up to the Dementyev dance studio are too long. Having to climb two floors gives Derek time to reconsider, and when he’s passed by a pair of seven year old girls and their mothers he almost turns around and heads back down. One of the mothers has a baby on her hip, and she stops two stairs above him to glance back at him, expression curious.

“The dance place?” he blurts out, because it’s better than her asking _are you lost_ or worse yet, _are you okay_ because God knows how many times he’s heard that in the last six months. Along with _poor soul_ and _such a tragedy_ , he’s sick of the words and never wants to hear them again.

She smiles gently and points past the landing to the narrow set of stairs leading further up. “Top floor,” she says. “It’s a converted attic, which makes it warm in the summer, but it has good air flow and fantastic light.”

As if he understands the meaning of those words, or why they might impact him. Derek knows nothing about dance.

He knows nothing about music, either, except that when Paige played it felt like magic, and the only time he feels alive now is when he’s listening to the recording he made when she played for him once. He’s tried to recapture the feeling since he came to New York, tried over and over by taking piano lessons, guitar lessons, even drums. He can’t sing—he already knew that and Laura reminds him regularly when he tries that he really _shouldn’t_ sing. There is  no musical instrument that Derek can find that draws him in and lets him stay.

But dance… he was walking by and saw the sign and found himself halfway up the first flight of stairs before he paused with the realization of what he was about to do. Dance has music. It has music similar to what Paige played, and maybe, just maybe, it can lift the darkness from around his heart and give him back the soul that her death took away.

The little girls and their mothers are gone. Music rises from somewhere above Derek, seeming to echo through the frame of the building, settling into his bones. He takes a step up, letting it pull at him, tug at his heartstrings until he makes his way into the heat of the attic, a place that smells like sweat and hard work and pain.

He hovers at the edge, not quite joining the crowd of mothers that watch their children dance, but staying close enough that he doesn’t stray too close to the dance floor. He counts sixteen young girls on the floor along with three boys of the same age. There are two instructors with them: one a man who smells of illness and impending death, his hand shaky as he maneuvers with a cane, and the other a young woman about Derek’s age, maybe older.

He inhales, knowing that scent can’t tell him if he can trust these people, but it can at least tell him if there is immediate trouble. There is nothing but hard work on the wind, and when he opens his mind, throws his senses wide, he sees no auras, nothing supernatural. Just the magic of the dance.

“You.”

He doesn’t realize at first that he’s being addressed, and when he does he takes a step back, unwilling to be noticed. “I’m not…”

The old man waves his cane, shakes it angrily. “No, no, I am not telling you to go. Come here. I need you on the floor, right here.” He jabs the cane down and it echoes loudly in the open room.

Derek hesitates, uncertain.

The young woman is at his elbow, touching him lightly and it takes everything within him not to jerk away. “I am Anya,” she introduces herself. “And this is my grandfather, Master Dementyev, formerly of the Russian Ballet. He would like to ask you to help me demonstrate a technique.”

“I don’t dance.”

“But you want to,” Dementyev says, his smile sharp and cunning, reminding Derek of a wolf for all that the man isn’t one. “In your heart.” He jabs at Derek’s chest with the tip of his cane. “It beats for the love of music, and you wish to fly through the dance.”

Maybe he was a little hasty ruling out all possible supernatural beings because that was eerily close to the truth. “I don’t know if I’d be any good at it,” Derek manages to say, and some of the children giggle. He feels his jaw set, refuses to look at them and watch them laugh at him. “But I was going to ask, yes.”

“Stand right here.” Dementyev moves well for someone as shaky as he is. “And my granddaughter, she will leap into your arms. Hold them out, just so.” He grips Derek’s wrists, positions him, and Derek is too surprised by the manhandling to object. By the time he thinks of what to say, by the time instinct overloads his senses, Dementyev backs off, stepping away.

“Right hand a bit higher, yes, like that.” He surveys Derek, and Derek finds himself standing tall, waiting.

Anya is on the other side of the studio, and the children watch the two of them avidly. Derek isn’t sure what to expect, then she is skipping towards him, feet light as they trip across the floor, one leap, then two, then on the third she launches herself at him and he captures her in a perfect split laid across his arms as he turns with her motion, rotating her around him once, then swinging her down to land on her toes, leaning into him. She lets one leg float up behind her, then darts back with a gleeful laugh. “Oh, he is _perfect_.”

Her words echo a sentiment he remembers all too well from Kate, but from Anya the tone holds no malice. She is pure delight, clapping her hands and coming in to hug him with a warmth that is more like Paige than Kate, her lips skating across his cheek. “You will _definitely_ learn to dance,” she says. “I want you as my partner in the showcase at the end of the summer. I will teach you myself if I have to.”

“I will teach,” Dementyev declares. “But you will need to work.” He cocks his head; Derek supplies his name and the man smiles.

Kids swarm around him, asking how he learned about dance. The little boys look at him with worship writ in their expressions, and he tries to see himself through their eyes, with the faded basketball jacket and his six foot tall frame. He knows they can’t see how broken he is, that he’s dropped out of high school and isn’t planning on going back. They just see someone who would not be dancing normally, and he _is_ , making it more acceptable to them.

He hates that he used to be that guy, that one who enforced the stereotypes and was an ass. He won’t do it anymore; Paige made him a better person.

“We talk after class.” Dementyev points to the side, then claps his hands. Derek takes his place on the side again, trying to ignore the way the moms are all watching him and focuses instead on the way the children learn, the moves they are doing. The music sings in his bones and his feet start to move, echoing motion as his body readies him to learn.

He waits through three classes that afternoon, then stays an hour beyond, working with Anya and Dementyev. By the time he leaves he is sore in ways he knows will heal soon and his mind feels at peace for the first time since Paige died. Kate left him euphoric before it all went to hell, but never peaceful. In this he finds something new that he desperately needs.

He carries home a contract for lessons and a need for a check from their insurance money. Laura gives it over without asking, solely because he smiles when he asks, and Derek counts that as a win.

#

It takes two weeks before Derek is willing to let Laura come with him to a lesson. It helps that she has a full time job for the summer and most of his lessons are at times when she’s not available. But when she has a morning free, and he plans on spending an hour in the studio with Anya and Dementyev, he reluctantly brings her up the staircase with him, trudging more slowly than his usual race of footsteps up both flights.

“Your feet sound sad today.” Dementyev gestures, and Derek quickly strips down to his workout clothes and takes his place at the barre. He doesn’t have time to think about Laura watching as he follows Anya through their warm up and drills, focusing on the placement of his feet, the stretch of his body. He hears the hint of a snarl when Dementyev pauses them both and rearranges Derek’s stance, pushing his feet to point out more, lifting his chest up and shifting the arch of his back just so. It grows louder when he and Anya move away from the barre and she touches him, fingertips lingering against his chest in a way that he knows is only choreography. 

He twists his head, throws himself off balance just so he can glare at Laura, flash his eyes to say _shut up_.

“Stop!”

And Derek does, falling gracelessly to the floor halfway through a move, while Anya catches herself and lands in first position, standing neatly at ballet attention. “I’m sorry. I won’t be distracted again,” he apologizes before the chastisement can come.

“I know. If you are, she will leave.” It is a statement of fact, but it doesn’t seem to be the end of the story either. Dementyev gestures, and Derek stands, giving him leave to inspect him. There’s a soft _humph_ , and a smack on his back; Derek jerks, trying not to pull away.

“You are wolf,” Dementyev finally says. “It is no matter, but it is best you tell me these things _before_ you risk your partner’s health with your strength. We must teach you to control your body so that you can dance with a human. I will not let you hurt Anya.”

Laura’s growl is loud, echoing in the empty chamber. Anya seems unbothered.

“Stand down, little wolf.” Dementyev points, and Laura hesitates, then sits in one of the guest chairs. “I mean you no harm. We will tell no one. We will simply teach him to dance as only wolves can, and he will be magnificent. The music sings to this one, pulls tight in his blood, and we will bring it to the surface so that he might shine.”

“It’s not a calling,” Derek protests. “It’s just…” He hesitates; Anya has heard some of the story of Paige, but there are pieces that Laura doesn’t know. That only his mother knew, and Peter, and they are both gone now. “I just want to dance.”

“Then you will.” Dementyev taps his cane on the floor, and Derek and Anya take their positions. When the music starts, they begin again, and Derek lets it take over.

He doesn’t want to do this for the rest of his life. He just wants to do it now, until he feels normal again. Until he _feels_.

#

When the end of summer comes, Derek dances in three pieces in the showcase. One is a duet with Anya, the final piece of the show. One is a piece with three other teenage boys, in which they show off increasingly difficult moves; Derek’s part is designed to show strength over skill, and he lifts the largest of the teens over his head, spinning slowly, making it look as easy as it is.

The third is a solo piece, soft and quiet, right in the middle of the show. The music, when it starts, has a tinny echo behind it of a recording being started, and whispered voices that are indistinguishable to human ears. Derek can hear them, though, hears Paige laugh and his own whisper of _you love me_ and the soft hiccup of a pause where they brushed lips, then her whisper of _I love you_ in return.

He has every stroke of the violin memorized, has always known it, long before this dance. He moves through the music and into it, celebrating the life that she had and remembering her. It aches, but the pain recedes, finding a place in his heart to live where it can be surrounded by music and movement.

As the last sound of her violin fades, the lights go low and he bows and lets her go.

#

He is done with ballet, and Dementyev is sad to see him go but seems to understand. Anya helps him find another school, another discipline, and Derek dances through his final year of high school—returning at Laura’s insistence—then through four years of college and two of a master’s degree. He teaches for a little extra spending money and because he enjoys it, and he keeps dance as his outlet, the one place where emotion can bloom and be safely shown. He uses it as the wall between him and others, interacting only within the confines of a safe environment.

Derek dances his way through different styles and genres until Laura says that something has happened, and they have to go back to Beacon Hills. That’s when the dance comes crashing down, when the music stutters to a stop, ending with her corpse in the ground and chains on his wrists.

The music disappears completely when Kate re-enters his life.

#

Years pass, and for a time, Derek forgets.

#

Beacon Hills is quieter than it was three years ago, although it is still far from peaceful. The pack that remains is smaller now, with Scott living in the dorms at his school an hour away, and the rest ranging even further. Lydia is at MIT and Danny at CMU, with Kira creating a small island for East Coast visitors between those two spaces, where she attends Columbia. Stiles is in southern California, and Isaac is somewhere in the mid-west. Malia travels with Peter, while Jackson remains in London. The younger pack members are still in high school, looking to Derek over that first year with the elders away.

It makes him feel old, and at times a little bit useless.

He has messages from them all, telling him when they will return soon for the summer, and what plans they have. Even Cora hopes to visit after having done two years abroad in Italy and Spain. She plans to spend six months with him before she leaves for Japan, and he plans to treasure every moment of it.

But it is still not enough, and he drifts through his days wondering what is missing.

#

He hears the violin while he is meandering along the street that passes for downtown in Beacon Hills. There’s a shop that sells locally made ice cream, a small convenience store, and three antique places. He pauses at he sound, cocks his head and traces it to a staircase leading up over the convenience store, the windows open on the top floor so that the sound of violin slips free.

Derek is halfway up the first flight of stairs before he stops, one hand on the rail, the music shivering through him. His fingers tap, finding the beat, and his toes move. He closes his eyes and for the first time in forever, he remembers.

He hears the feet, traces each step in his mind as he makes his way up to the studio. There was no sign outside, so he has no idea who the small woman is who teaches, her white hair held back in a bun, her skin wrinkled with age despite the delicate way she moves. She sees him—they all see him, the mothers giving him an appraising look—but she ignores him in favor of her students.

He likes that. He doesn’t want to take anything away from them.

“Do you have a daughter?”

The woman next to him is easily ten years his senior, if not more. Derek does his best not to growl at her for standing so close that it makes the wolf itch under his skin. He shakes his head once. “No kids,” he says, and when she gives him a wary look he pastes on one of his most charming smiles. “I didn’t realize this studio was here. I used to dance, and when I heard the music, I came up.”

He can’t catalog the rapidly shifting scents that come from her skin: confusion, worry, disbelief. “Madame primarily takes select, top students,” she says, tone sharp. “We drive for an hour every week to come to her studio.”

He doesn’t know what she thinks he is going to do, so he just shakes his head. “I live in Beacon Hills. I own a building, about ten blocks that way.” He gestures in the right direction, where _quaint_ gives way to _business_ and the high rise apartment buildings mix with squat manufacturing buildings and skyscraper offices. “I don’t want to interrupt their lessons. I’ll just come back—”

“Stay.” The single word is an order, barked by Madame as she lines the girls up at the barre. “We will speak when lessons are done.”

This is a test Derek understands. He went through it with Dementyev, and he has seen other classical dancers do it as well. If he is serious about the dance, he will stay.

He almost laughs that he passed the test the first time solely because he lingered in the one place he could feel Paige. It had nothing to do with the dance, then.

 _Paige_.

He hasn’t thought of her in years, not in this visceral way. She was the first thing that Beacon Hills took from him, but not the last. And with the music singing under his skin, he wonders if she is still waiting for him within the dance.

Derek sits quietly through three classes, and the sun has dipped low in the sky before the studio is empty and Madame stands in the center of it, one foot delicately pointed, waiting. She gestures at the space in front of her, and Derek steps into it, taking up his position with only a momentary falter.

He is awkward in jeans and a t-shirt, unstretched and not ready for the dance. But it still flows through him, brings him an ease that he’s only found anything close to in fighting. With every breath, he feels tension slip free, and when she smiles down at him from a lift, he wonders if he’s found his way home again.

“You dance very well, for a brute,” she says when the dance is done, slapping his chest.

“You dance well for an old woman,” he counters, and she laughs at him, wrinkles crinkled around the corners of her eyes.

“You miss the dance.” She points to where a stack of towels sits upon a table, and he takes one, patting at the sweat on his forehead.

He tastes her words, thinks about what they mean now as opposed to what they might have once meant. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I danced for seven years in New York. I started because I missed someone, and I found her there.”

“And now?”

When he looks, he sees the faint film in her eyes, the way she probably cannot see perfectly. And yet, he has watched her for hours and he knows she is sharp. She may not see with conventional vision, but she _sees_ , of that he is certain. He wonders how much of his heart is laid bare before her in this moment. “And now I dance for myself,” he admits. “Paige was the first person I loved.”

“But not the last.” Her head tilts, gaze assessing him. Derek instinctively breathes to calm his heartbeat, to put away thoughts he can’t admit to.

“Not the last,” he agrees. He doesn’t say who, or why, or whether it is now or in the past, but she nods as if he has answered a question.

“For some, dance is something they enjoy. A way to stay fit, or perhaps they love to move to the music.” She moves around the studio with careful grace, gathering things up and putting them back in their places. “For others, it is like a sickness in the blood that can only be healed when on the floor. It is an addiction that leaves a hole in the heart when not indulged.” She pauses, turns to face him. “You should dance.”

“Are you offering me lessons?”

“No.”

His heart skips at her rejection; he takes a step back, stung.

She smiles. “I will retire soon. You do not see as I do, but you do see into their hearts. You taste the lie on their breath, you inhale their excitement and you will _know_ which of them are meant for the dance, and which just dally in its arms. You will teach with me now, and when I am gone, you will simply teach.” When he doesn’t respond immediately, she chuffs softly. “This is like breathing for you, Derek Hale. Do not deny yourself the dance.”

“How do you know my name?” Because of everything she’s said, that is the most impossible, and the one he wants to cling to the most.

“Your grandmother was disappointed when your mother didn’t live for the dance,” Madame says quietly. “One day I will give you pictures. When you’re ready. You look like her, you know, and you have the sense of her. Your mother did try; she only wanted to make Marlena happy. But she never had it in her heart. You take after your grandmother, and she would love to see you in the studio where she felt at home.”

It is too much at once, and he sits again abruptly. Madame lets him be, lets him take it in and hold it all close to his heart. By the time he feels he can breathe again, she offers him a copy of the class schedule and reminds him to be on time. He manages to find his words, to ask what else she teaches other than ballet, and to offer to look into bringing more styles into the schedule.

By the time he leaves, his heart feels lighter than it has since Laura’s death. He is almost able to believe in the future.

#

The pack converges on Derek’s loft on a Sunday night in late May after everyone is finally back from their school and travels. The younger members—Stiles insists on calling them puppies—make a point of talking to everyone, rubbing their cheeks against them, instinctively trying to bring their scent back home. Derek sits a little apart, letting them reintroduce themselves to each other and watching as they bring Cora, and surprisingly Jackson, into the renewed pack as well.

The loft is full of laughter and happy heartbeats. Derek inhales the soft scents and exhales pleasure. This is what pack is supposed to be.

“You look like a proud papa.” Stiles drops onto the sofa next to Derek, his knee knocking against him, shoulder leaning into him. Derek takes the offer for what it is and lets his fingers touch Stiles’s shoulder, slide to his neck, leaving traces of his scent there. Stiles huffs his approval.

“So what’s been keeping you busy, big guy? Lonely without us, or have the puppies kept you hopping?” Stiles leans into him, tilts his head to rest against Derek. It gives Derek a perfect view of the line of his throat, the hollow under the collarbones. He realizes he’s staring when Stiles clears his throat, and he makes himself look away.

“Liam, Mason, and Brett are fine,” Derek says. “Malia and Peter come back for the full moons. It’ll be interesting to watch Brett and Jackson butt heads over the summer.”

“Rumor has it that Jackson’s starting BU in the fall.”

Derek shakes his head; he can see the train wreck coming with Jackson and Lydia in the same state again. It already begins, the way she sits close to Jordan, but Jackson leans in, hanging on every word. She dangles them both and whichever she chooses, it will mean heartbreak for the other.

He wonders, sometimes, if her banshee blood is pure, or if she is descended from sirens as well. He thinks it might explain a lot.

Stiles elbows him gently. “You didn’t say what you’ve been up to. Or have you been living the life of leisure, maintaining your building and staying away from people?”

That makes Derek laugh, the sound loud in the loft. Cora gives him a startled look, and Scott seems pleased at the sound, as if it’s somehow his fault that Derek is happy. Stiles smirks. “I know you, dude,” he says.

“Not as well as you think.” Derek wonders what Stiles would do if he knew how Derek spends every morning, with the tiny toddlers barely able to walk yet, clattering about in tiny tap shoes or trying so hard to plié with short, chubby legs. Or the afternoons with the middle children, who are just starting to grasp the reality of ballet, and the few who are trying to understand hip-hop or jazz. Then there are the evenings, with the adults who want to find a way to move again without the boredom of a gym workout, or his favorite classes with the teenagers who have been dancing their entire lives, the ones who have music in their heart and they want to push themselves past the point of dance and into making it their _life_. The ones who sometimes break out of their serious mold and spend an entire class just doing whatever comes to mind, moving to the music and creating something new.

Derek spends his days surrounded by people now. They have given him a new life, new breath, and he can’t imagine a world without them.

He holds out one hand, and when Stiles stares at him, confused, Derek says, “Phone.”

Stiles hands it over, eyebrows drawn together in a deep frown, and he watches as Derek enters an appointment for the next day with only a time and an address. “Dude, what is this?”

“Just come,” Derek says. He wants to say _come alone_ because he isn’t sure he’s ready to share this with the pack yet. “If you don’t want to come at ten, then come at two, or at five. Don’t come between noon and two, or between six and seven. I eat then.”

“Is this where you work?” 

Derek simply nods and ignores any more questions. He lifts an arm, offers Kira space to tuck herself against his other wide, ends up with his arms around both of them and Cora hanging over the back of the sofa with her chin on his head. They slowly pile in around him, including him in the pack, making him feel as if he is part of them again.

#

Stiles doesn’t arrive until half past two, right when Derek is in the middle of a semi-private lesson with a small family of dancers. There are three girls between the ages of four and seven, and their cousin, a six year old boy. They work together twice a week, and Madame has handed them to Derek as his first private, semi-elite lessons. Their parents are dancers, and the children show innate promise. Derek can hear the way their hearts race when the music begins, sees the patient attention that they give to the instruction.

He is on his knees when Stiles walks in, helping the youngest get her feet just right. The middle girl fixes her own stance just by watching, and by the time Derek stands, they are all neatly in a line like ducklings, ready to follow his lead.

He moves slowly, trying to ignore the heart that beats by the doorway, the thin little skips and hops of confusion as he leads the children into the dance. They work through the steps three times, then he moves back to allow them to practice on their own.

They are so serious, such perfect little dancers, until they are done and collapse into giggles, laughing when he scoops them up and swings them around.

By the time they finish, the next class is waiting, and Madame shoos Derek off to the side while she gets the class started warming up at the barre.

“You dance,” Stiles says, whiskey eyes wide and bright. “Derek, you were _dancing_. With _children_.”

“I teach with Madame.” He can tell him the rest later, how when Madame retires, this will be his studio. For now, he doesn’t have the words. Instead he pulls out his own phone, brings up the scan he has of one of Madame’s pictures from  sixty years before. “This is my grandmother. She danced here once.”

He can’t remember another time that he’s seen Stiles without a sharp answer, without words of some kind to shed light on any matter. But Stiles is absolutely still now, silent in ways that Derek doesn’t know what to do with. It makes him wonder if he should have kept this to himself, should have held the dance close to his heart and away from the pack.

Derek leaves the phone with Stiles, takes a step back. “I need to teach. Stick around if you want to watch.”

It’s important to him that Stiles understands. Eventually the pack will know, but out of all of them, Stiles is the one that Derek needs to see this, to get it. Out of all of them, Stiles’s opinion matters.

He feels the heat of that gaze upon him through each class, whether he’s working with nine year olds or with the group of three teenagers creating their own mixed style for the showcase at the end of the summer. He sees himself within them, all ready to fly out of Beacon Hills for parts unknown and an adulthood they aren’t ready for, yet binding themselves to each other with the love of dance.

They work hard, and in the end Derek sends them off with praise and turns to see Madame and Stiles sitting and talking quietly. Madame rises as he approaches; she only touches his cheek as he arrives, nodding once.

“I do not need you tomorrow morning,” she says. “Take some time for yourself, Derek.”

“So, this is what you do.” Stiles leans forward, elbows on his knees, staring up at Derek. He is contained motion, as if he’s ready to burst and is doing his best to hold himself down.

“This is what I do.” Derek inhales, and on an exhale words spill out slowly. He talks about Paige, about why he climbed into the dance studio the first time, and what kept him there. He sees Stiles’s eyes close, feels the way his heartbeat shifts, his scent twists sour. So Derek tells him how he danced his way through his grief, how he came to terms with who he was. And how now he found stability in the dance again. That it isn’t about Paige anymore, that it’s simply because he needs to do it.

“Why am I here?” Stiles asks, finally sitting up, stretching slowly. “Why did you ask me to come?”

“Why did you stay?” Derek counters, because that is answer enough for him. He asked, Stiles came, he stayed. Derek rises from the plastic chair, offers Stiles a hand. “I asked you here to be a part of my dance.”

“I don’t dance like you do,” Stiles objects. 

Their fingers tangle, and Derek tugs him in close, one hand on his hip. “It doesn’t matter,” Derek says. He takes a step back and Stiles follows, slipping into the movement of following Derek’s lead. He takes it slow—he will take it as slow as he needs for Stiles to understand, to see what Derek is offering, asking for. With each step, Stiles becomes more assured, and Derek swings him around, moving to music he hears in his mind, hums under his breath.

“Will you dance with me?” Derek asks, and he means everything with the words.

Stiles nods, and Derek hears the violins as Paige plays them forward, dancing into whatever is yet to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me [on tumblr](http://tryslora.tumblr.com)!


End file.
